The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield

by Anna Fishbeyn

  “Sounds to me like you loved him, Grandma,” I said with a smile.

  “Tfu! I spit on love!” Grandmother threw back, actually spitting on the turquoise placemat on the table, “I never loved any man!”

  “I’m going to marry Eddie,” I cried. “He’s going to be my husband so you better start thinking of him as your grandson.”

  “Over my dead body,” Grandmother screamed.

  “Then so be it—I declare war!”

  I jumped from the table and, to my shock, saw Eddie in the doorway, carrying two heavy grocery bags in each hand. Long-stem carrots and potatoes and parsley root and green onion and beets mingled together in anticipation of Grandmother’s war-weathered borscht. My father carried nothing; Russians loved to test the mettle and health of a new man entering their clan.

  “I like him,” my father suddenly announced, to my shock, in Russian. “He’s a good guy.”

  “Traitor!” my grandmother screamed, glaring at Father.

  “Is anything the matter?” Eddie asked.

  “Don’t worry—Grandma is just angry because my father forgot to buy butter,” I offered.

  “Oh.”

  “Why do you always side against us?” My mother tried to be calm, but her anger at Father was already beginning to pulsate at her temples, because as usual this incident was not just about this incident but every other incident where he had sided against her.

  “I didn’t know we had already made a decision,” my father remarked cheerfully. “I thought we were still deciding.” I looked into my father’s face but I couldn’t read him; I didn’t know whether he was more interested in opposing my mother and grandmother, or genuinely supporting me.

  “We already decided,” my grandmother announced, “and you need to support us—we need to present a united front.” She said this even though I was standing in front of them. The united front was a concept I was familiar with since childbirth: parents squabbling and pretending to be a united front but never actually uniting.

  “I’m really excited to try your borscht,” Eddie said to my grandmother. “I hear it’s incredible!”

  “Always be careful wiz women—you tink it’s borscht but maybe it poison? Ha, ha!” my father exclaimed, laughing.

  “To show you just how much they really love you,” Eddie chipped in.

  My father smiled at Eddie. “I like him—a very unusual American.”

  My father put his arm around Eddie and said, “You chave sense of humor—I like zhat—a man who understands me.”

  “You like everyone,” my mother snapped in Russian, then she turned to Eddie. “Forgive us Eddie, ve’re being rude. Ve’re very happy to make borscht for you.”

  A pang went through my stomach. I came closer to Eddie, cutting the distance between us, leaving only breathing space, suddenly afraid that their words mattered, that words could kill feelings, that it was dangerous to be around their bare tongues. The fear bent me in half. I leaned toward him, my body in his orbit, and whispered to myself what he told me on the plane: It’s about us, not them, remember that, Emma, about us, not them.

  He stood, bound by heavy bags, breathing on me, imprisoned by our Russian language, disparate sounds swirling, flying around him like the grating notes of a malfunctioning instrument he couldn’t quite tune. Mutely, he bore his need for me. My lips landed on his mouth—hard, harder, harder, I whispered to myself, and pressed my chest against him. How impertinently I stuck my tongue in! I grabbed his neck and pulled his hair with fingers lithe and quick. I even considered pawing his buttocks but this was plenty: this was enough to dazzle them, to stun them with my fearless silent snarl: you cannot break my will.

  “Look at that insolence!” my grandmother said, “again all this pornography in my house.”

  “Enough!” my father said, “let them be. Why do you always stick your nose where it doesn’t belong?”

  “Don’t speak that way to my mother!” my mother chimed in.

  “He’s a great guy,” my father reiterated, then he added in a strange voice, “She’s in love with him, can’t you see that? And we’re in America now—if there’s one thing she should be able to do in America it’s marry for love.”

  “We’re Jews,” my grandmother retorted, “first and foremost, that’s why we’re in America—not for love!”

  “Why is everything black and white for you?” my father exclaimed. “Can’t you see how unpredictable the world is?”

  “Oh I see.” My mother’s face suddenly exploded in red hues and in a span of a second, she looked twenty years younger, the way she looked in Russia. “You’re thinking of her! Of your love! The one you had to abandon. I see: we couldn’t love in Russia but we can love here—in America! I hear she’s in New Jersey, your love! You’re free to go visit her. No one is holding you down, no one has you in chains, Semeyon!”

  “Have you lost your mind? Or maybe you want me to bring up Fedya, my student, my math student? How could you? Or have you forgotten? Do you think I didn’t know? You think you hid your secret well? Did you know that I once walked in on you two kissing—and I didn’t say anything—I kept it to myself because I thought: she’ll come to her senses eventually! She’ll forget him. Do you know where your precious Fedya is now? In Boston with his young wife and two children. He wrote to me, that bastard, do you know why—he needed a reference for a university position, as if I was some kind of fool!”

  “You said nothing?” my mother muttered, her forehead perspiring. “Why didn’t you reproach me?”

  “How could I possibly reproach you—what right did I have?”

  The rest of us had disappeared. My parents looked at each other as if they had seen each other for the first time.

  “I said nothing,” my father went on, “because I loved you—I loved you madly!”

  “You loved her!” my mother blurted out through tears.

  “A momentary lapse in judgment,” he returned gently. “When I saw you with him, when I saw the two of you, I thought my stomach was being ripped in half. That’s when I knew.”

  “What did you know?”

  “That I couldn’t bear it: you being with another man.” He reached toward her with his hand and caressed her cheeks, her hair, and the moment hung like a miracle between them. “So I waited for you. Do you remember that—how you couldn’t look at me, all that time, you couldn’t look at me.”

  “I was repulsed.”

  “I know.”

  “And then I was lost, Semeyon, lost … and ashamed.”

  “So let her be!”

  “Who?

  “Our daughter—let her be.”

  “But what if she’s making a mistake?”

  “Let her make it … we made ours.”

  I smiled at Eddie. We’re going to be all right, I whispered to myself, imagining my father’s support wrap around my shoulders like a protective wool coat, like the oversized shubas I had worn as a child.

  “Not sure if I should ask what’s going on or if I should—just wait,” Eddie wondered out loud.

  “You should alvays wait, Eddik, patience is very positive for women!” my father exclaimed cheerfully. “But let me give you zhis hair of advice: if you want to marry into zhis family, you better learn some Russian and fast! Ha! Or my vomen vill eat you up.”

  Eddie laughed as if he understood what my father intimated, but his laughter was carefree and flat and somehow to my ear quintessentially American, unaware of the nuanced layers of meaning and duplicity that permeated our Russian world, unaware of the warnings hidden in my father’s jolly face.

  Americans are Invading

  Out of love for my father, my mother relented, allowing me to make “her mistake.” Both of my parents receded into the familiar background, the landscape behind my grandmother’s front lines, behind her war. Unmoved by my parents’ sudden softening and gazes at one another, and losing my mother as her ally, Grandmother escalated her offensive. She greeted me in the morning on our way to the bathroom wi
th stories of American anti-Semitism. She recited at will the indeterminate future of Jewish children, and my hybrid children in particular. And she foretold horror stories of Eddie’s Catholic mother, the woman she had never met but whom she anticipated with great relish and enthusiasm, and celebratory vengeance, which culminated in the ominous statement: “YOU WILL SEE!” On my end, it was important to show similar warrior-like resolve, and to periodically fan my heavy artillery, which included such statements as “you know nothing,” “you live in a dream world,” and “you’ve never truly been in love.” Grandmother laughed at me, but it didn’t matter: as long as I fought, I still had a chance. Submission was out of the question; this too pumped through our Russian blood—this implacable proclivity for war—which could only end when the weaker one lays down her weapon. Perhaps I always knew it would have to be me, but in the meantime, it was important to keep fighting, to soldier on. I simply moved forward, toward a future she refused me.

  I called Mrs. Beltrafio in the presence of my grandmother, and announced in clearly articulated English: “My parents are dying to meet you!” I knew that Grandmother would submit out of social pressure because Grandmother was a social bee, a queen in her own right, a charming exuberant hostess with meticulous cooking skills and a love of vodka. She wisely calculated that if she couldn’t kill this relationship now (we were deep into September), then surely she would have to endure Thanksgiving staring across the table at the mysterious goyim. Mrs. Beltrafio in turn squealed that she was “supremely delighted” and bade me to assure my mother that she has always “loved” the Russian people. Cynthia and Hal purchased tickets to Chicago the same day, lest they, God forbid, appear hesitant or nonplussed about our engagement. My family, upon learning of the Americans’ impending arrival two weeks hence, had no choice but to begin preparing themselves in the proper fashions, as well as swathing their brains in nerve-soothing epigrams.

  Grandmother’s brain was particularly afflicted. Days before the visit she broke into rapturous shrieks: “Amerikantzy are coming, Amerikantzy are coming!” On the eve of their arrival, as she prepared the food and reapplied the lipstick for the fiftieth time, she posed hypothetical questions to the stove: “Where are the Amerikantzy going to sleep?” (In a hotel, not in our bedrooms!) “What do they like to eat?” (Lasbanya, (more commonly known as lasagna), Saltless Rubber (more commonly known as grilled chicken), Raw Uzhas (more commonly known as steak au poivre) and Turkey on a Bed of Sugar (more commonly known as Thanksgiving). “What do they like to talk about?” (Weather, real estate, and Bill Climpton’s sex life.) “Are we going to like them?” (Not one iota.)

  My father went from anxiety to ecstasy within the span of a minute, for the mere arrival of guests (of any nationality or political persuasion) offered us a chance to stun them with our musical talents. My mother was a weeping soprano, my father a lugubrious tenor, Grandmother a masterful alto, and Bella that rarity of voices—a coloratura. I inherited the dramatic mezzo-soprano from my grandmother, Liza, my father’s mother. When we sang together we sounded like a band of starving opera singers, voices leaping one over another, never exactly in tune, deafening our adoring audiences. The living room was our communal stage and the embarrassment we sometimes felt at our exhibitionism was quickly squashed by the exquisite pleasure of performing and the customary compliments from our guests: “You’re all so talented!” or better yet, “you should be performing at the Metropolitan Opera!” A collection of Broadway’s greatest hits rested on the Steinway, and my father soaked his fingers in warm water and soap to groom them for his virtuoso stunts on the mandolin.

  Mr. and Mrs. Beltrafio arrived on a hot September afternoon, tired and sweaty from the plane ride. They looked wet and peevish, like neglected children. Neither was hungry, or so they said. Grandmother stared at her table overflowing with food, and one got the sense that she loathed them already. She and my mother had slaved over meat and potato pierogies, garlic-laced cow’s tongue, sour-creamed tomatoes, an eggplant salad, a meat stew that contained to my and Bella’s delight a cow’s brain, a liver pâté, and the ever-present Beluga caviar, which Sirofima eyed with passion and to which, at five years old, she was already addicted.

  Mrs. Beltrafio immediately complimented us. “Everything looks so good, Mrs. Kabelmacher,” but we could see that she had no idea what that “everything” was.

  “Thank you,” my mother said, “my mother cooked most of it.”

  Mrs. Beltrafio shot a glance in my grandmother’s direction and nodded.

  “EVERRRRYTHING LOOOOOOKS DELICIOUS!” she exclaimed in a ringing voice, enunciating every word with visible care, so that Grandmother, who was far shorter, had a perfect view of Mrs. Beltrafio’s well-cared-for gums.

  “Why is she yelling?” my grandmother asked me in Russian.

  “Americans often make the mistake of thinking we immigrants are deaf,” Igor pointed out in his usual caustic manner.

  “She’s trying to be polite—she says your food looks delicious,” I said.

  “Ask her if she likes a cow’s brain in a bone?”

  “My grandmother wants to know,” I said, turning to Eddie’s mother, “if you like meat stews—she cooked one especially for you.”

  “Oh, she didn’t have to go all-out on my account,” Mrs. Beltrafio demurred.

  “Vy of course, you our guests,” my mother exclaimed wildly, and then offered, “why won’t you sit down, why won’t all of you sit down.” But no one sat down. Mrs. Beltrafio was wearing a long silk brown dress, and an expensive cream on her face that she either forgot to dab with powder or purposefully left shiny with grease to display her smooth, wrinkle-free skin. She kept staring at the cathedral ceiling, which stretched nearly thirty feet into the air, and at the carved wooden staircase that seemed to coil into the very sky.

  “You have a beautiful house,” Mrs. Beltrafio offered after another silent pause.

  “Sank you,” my father said, who felt that his success could be measured by the height of our ceilings.

  “She’s not very good looking,” my grandmother said in Russian to Bella, while smiling at Mrs. Beltrafio.

  “But she has excellent skin,” Bella observed.

  “Eventually, Sonichka,” Grandmother addressed my mother, “you should ask what she uses.” Then Grandmother shot a wry glance at my mother’s slightly wrinkled neck, an act that always provoked defiance in my mother.

  “I think it’s surgery,” my mother snipped. “Besides, she doesn’t seem to like us.”

  “Offer her vodka,” Grandmother suggested.

  “Would you like vine, Cyntia?” my mother asked, fearing that vodka had become too much of a cliché.

  “Yes, I’d love some,” she replied.

  “What kind of a name is Sisiya?” Grandmother wondered.

  “I think it’s German,” my mother said.

  “And Billfarto?” Grandmother asked.

  “Italian for sure,” said Bella, cackling as she winked at me.

  “Did Grandmother just say ‘Bill farted?’” I whispered into Bella’s ear, and we laughed the way we used to laugh as children whenever anyone said “ya puknul.”

  “My daughters are halways laughing at somesing stupid,” my mother explained to Mrs.

  Beltrafio, but when she barked, “perestantye!” at us, she was not able to control her own exploding grin.

  Cynthia gulped the wine as though it were beer, and then excused herself to search for her husband. I followed Mrs. Beltrafio through another passageway, knowing that Mr. Beltrafio was in the living room, supposedly admiring our bird paintings.

  Our house had many secret passageways because, at the back of their minds, my parents feared a KGB invasion in some unforeseeable future. For instance, in our magnificent mahogany library, behind the bookcase devoted to Russian texts, specifically behind a thick tome entitled Stalin’s Evil Genius: Schizophrenic Paranoia or the Accident of Historical Convenience, there was a gold button that transformed the bookcase into
a revolving door and ushered one into an entirely different section of the house. This superbly insulated, windowless, concrete space contained three rooms we called the Triangle, stocked with canned and dry foods in case of a third world war or a shattering family quarrel that God forbid involved Russian swear words. Here we kept our most precious books and notebooks, my father’s poetry, letters from lovers, Bella’s diaries, and my sketches of every family member, starting from the time I was seven (when my father gave me the art journal and my first grade teacher, Ludmila Vasilievna, anointed me an art prodigy). On the right, a staircase hid behind a lustrous gold velvet curtain and connected to an underground beneath our basement. The underground was equipped with conveniently placed maps and embossed directions that led one out into the front yard, the highway, or the Winnetka shopping mall (though the walking distance in this case was only advisable if you were consciously trying to lose weight).

  I tried to imagine what Mrs. Beltrafio might say if she learned about our secret mishugas as I hid in the library, which was demarcated from the living room by French doors. They were opaque but had zero insulation, and so I leaned my ear against the door, truncating my breaths.

  I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them bickering quietly with each other and settling into our triangular purple couch.

  “Don’t do anything Cynthia, I beg you, please.”

  “When have I ever done anything?” she admonished, “I only observe human nature.

  “Their taste is despicable—I mean, Good Lord, this sofa should have been on Star Trek,” she snorted, “and they butcher the English language to such an extent I feel like I’m at a steel factory and I’ve forgotten my earplugs. I know this isn’t kind of me, darling Harold, but for a scholar like myself, well, you can hardly blame me for feeling put out. How can I possibly be expected to get along with her mother or God forbid that other woman—her grandmother? She’s got the eyes of a witch! She wants to swallow me whole, can’t you see that, Hal? To be in this country for how many years—fifteen, sixteen—and still remain so ignorant—why, it’s shameful!”